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Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

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Re: Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

#161

Post by yarg »

riffraff wrote: post #138
yarg wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption there that the capacity for creativity in China comparable to that in the west. I wonder firstly about the extent to which creativity can exist to a societally significant extent under an increasingly authoritarian government. I also wonder about the extent to which the Chinese creative class was purged in the cultural revolution, and what impact that may have had on the societal capacity for creativit…

Let's say China has 20 times less creativity than the west. This means still more creativity than most western countries because of their size.

That's really not how statistics works though.

Imagine a pair of overlapping normal distributions (https://www.google.com/search?q=overlapping+normal+distribut...), the ratio between the two is far from fixed, and the further of centre you go, the greater the discrepancy.

My suspicion is that an authoritarian regime is likely to offset the centre of the creativity distribution.

But that's not the full extent of what I suspect of the Chinese population's distribution in terms of creativity.

My thoughts are that it's more likely to be a partially truncated normal distribution, with a rapid and significant drop off at the high end of the creativity spectrum.

This is all pure conjecture, but if either possibility is true it would be significantly restricting to Chinese creativity, and if both are true it would be devastating (especially in terms of their ability to compete).

Re: Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

#162

Post by yarg »

riffraff wrote: post #138
yarg wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption there that the capacity for creativity in China comparable to that in the west. I wonder firstly about the extent to which creativity can exist to a societally significant extent under an increasingly authoritarian government. I also wonder about the extent to which the Chinese creative class was purged in the cultural revolution, and what impact that may have had on the societal capacity for creativit…

Let's say China has 20 times less creativity than the west. This means still more creativity than most western countries because of their size.

You are right however, that China does have a significant advantage in terms of scale due to their population - and this is an advantage compounded by low pay and a lack of worker rights.

Re: Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

#163

Post by ethbro »

riffraff wrote: post #128
pupdogg wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fair to say that, in 2019, Huawei scale money can buy you online reputation...including removal of any documented instances that might hurt its image. After all, Google was their partner for a good amount of time.

MSFT was a giant but was not able to hide the Halloween documents, I don't see why Huawei would succeed in that.

You're talking about a company whose majority ownership is some sort of murky "employee coop without voting rights."

The modern Chinese legal system isn't nearly as predicable as other jurisdictions.

Re: Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

#164

Post by everybodyknows »

codedokode wrote: post #69
walrus01 wrote: post #21

It's well known in the telecom/internet infrastructure business that Huawei: a) bugged the hell out of Nortel's ottawa area offices, both physically, by rootkit, and by getting their own people hired to physically smuggle out documents and design data b) Copied the entire DWDM / optical transport product line c) Released a nearly identical product a few years later, and sold it at a ridiculously low price, effectivel…

> Released a nearly identical product a few years later, and sold it at a ridiculously low price, If it violates the patents, then why did the company not sue Huawei and get a compensation? If it doesn't violate the patents then what's the problem?

>If it doesn't violate the patents then what's the problem?

Theft of trade secrets is a crime.

Re: Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

#165

Post by riffraff »

ethbro wrote: post #163
riffraff wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSFT was a giant but was not able to hide the Halloween documents, I don't see why Huawei would succeed in that.

You're talking about a company whose majority ownership is some sort of murky "employee coop without voting rights." The modern Chinese legal system isn't nearly as predicable as other jurisdictions.

well, but the chinese legal system is not the issue here, we're talking about silencing media reporting on a scandal of sorts, outside of china.

Re: Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

#166

Post by yborg »

axaxs wrote: post #48
jarfil wrote: post #41

It's kind of funny to speak of "stealing tech" when it's the foreign companies themselves who give Chinese manufacturers all that's needed to set up production lines to make the tech. Like, what did you expect, that they wouldn't run third shifts or sell the stuff to whoever paid them for it?

Exactly. I have a hard time feeling sympathy for any company that outsourced everything to a foreign nation, then get ripped off by said nation. Were the few points in stock price worth it?

Yes, very much so to the generations of Western executives who have made these decisions over the last 25 years.

Re: Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

#167

Post by gloflo »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #135
geofft wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The passive voice here is fascinating. Huawei did something! What did they do? They got accused. Who is accusing them? AKHAN Semiconductor (and the FBI), a small company in Illinois whose primary product is these diamond-coated screens. Past their founder, the second person on their about page is their "Vice President of Government Affairs;" the third person listed on their about page is their "Global Security and In…

We would be very skeptical because the Chinese government is very untrustworthy. If the BBC reported that a British tech company found out Samsung was spying on it, I doubt anyone (except maybe Samsung and the South Korean government) would dismiss the accusation out of hand.

Did you miss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure... ?

Re: Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

#168

Post by gloflo »

proy24 wrote: post #64

Unrelated but in their Bangalore office, they had sleeping bunks and showers in office premises and managers were routinely setting impossible deadlines and employees encouraged to work all day and night and sleep/shower in office if needed.

Sounds like the typical working conditions of an Apple Inc satellite. Also unrelated.

Re: Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

#169

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #12
chlee wrote: post #5

Wall Street Journal has recently published an article [1] detailing some of the most high profile technology thefts and espionage related to Huawei. According to the article, here's a list of thefts and espionage attributed to Huawei, employees of Huawei, or people related to Huawei. 1. Stealing tech at tradeshows: On a summer evening in 2004, as the Supercomm tech conference in Chicago wound down, a middle-aged Chin…

Someone at one of Cisco’s competitors once told me that Huawei copied their routers down to the English silk screened assembly instructions on the PCBs. Friend of mine also does contracting work for them. They never pay their bills on time apparently.

Grain of salt on the latter concern, because lots of big American companies are also infamous for not paying contractors on time. One of our best (huge) clients at my last company got more than a year into arrears with us, and friends at other companies have much more lurid stories than that.

Re: Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

#170

Post by dang »

exergy wrote: post #152
dang wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't cross into personal attack on HN. That only makes this place worse. Also, please don't post unsubstantive comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think it was a very valid thing to post. His comment made me dive into OPs history to discover that he might as well be a paid propaganda spreader. Or at the very least not someone worth engaging or taking seriously. Why is it considered unsubstantive?

It's unsubstantive because it brings up a personal point solely (if implicitly) to cast aspersion on another user.

Internet commenters are a million times too likely to assume that someone they disagree with is posting in bad faith. This is probably the biggest poison we see on HN, and it's growing. When it comes to minorities of any kind (such as nationality), the effect is to gang up on others and hound them. If that sounds odd, imagine how you'd feel if expressing your personal view on something led people to accuse you of being a spy or a paid agent. That's happening commonly now. For an example from a few months ago, see the thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19401961.

This comes from a cognitive bias rather than malice—the bias that, because my views are so obviously bright and light to me, anyone disagreeing must be coming from a dark place—but it's no less poisonous for being unintentional.

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